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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Any Jewelry, post: 335927, member: 2844&quot;]My brain didn&#039;t work very well yesterday, slightly better today. So, for what it&#039;s worth:</p><p>In the case of PNG and other regions of the world, tourist items is a term not just for items bought locally by visiting tourists, but also bought by traders. There is nothing wrong with that, it provides an extra income for families.</p><p>So yes, they are &#039;real tribal&#039; pieces, but not for traditional use, and not made in the style that was prevalent in these areas 150 years ago.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I lived in Oz in the late 60s-early 70s, ethnographic galleries were stacked with these carvings. They were even sold in shows in community centres. That&#039;s how I picked up the name of the village of the concentric ring masks, Misingi.</p><p><br /></p><p>The tall figures are a bit of a mystery to me. They are not like anything I know from Papua Gulf, where the faces are generally round or broad, like this:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]112586[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]112587[/ATTACH]</p><p><a href="http://www.art-pacific.com/artifacts/nuguinea/papuan/gulfcarv.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.art-pacific.com/artifacts/nuguinea/papuan/gulfcarv.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.art-pacific.com/artifacts/nuguinea/papuan/gulfcarv.htm</a></p><p>They are probably tourist items from West Irian, I can see some resemblance with traditional Irian styles.</p><p>By the way, I prefer the more neutral name West Irian to the politically charged name Irian Jaya. The Papua refugees I&#039;ve met are not very fond of the term, to say the least. Jaya means victory, as in Indonesian victory. And consequently loss of any hope of Papuan independence.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, I agree with komo, 1970s, possibly even as late as 1990s for the West Irian(?) figures, and made for sale.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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